The Importance of Connections

The Importance of Connections

Global interdependence ties our
environmental fate to others, but also creates a public store of good examples
to follow.

In nature everything is connected
to everything else. Aldo Leopold taught us that back in the 1950s. Twenty years
after the first issue of World Watch
was published, an ever larger segment of the population seems to understand the
implications of our interconnectedness.

NASA scientist James Hansen warned
us in 1988 that humans were changing the climate and the effects of that change
were starting to become evident. Not many people outside of Washington paid
attention. Many refused to believe it. Today, millions of people live in town
centers to avoid driving to work. Consumers buy the hybrid Toyota Prius in
record numbers. Venture capital floods into technologies that reduce energy use
or generate power from renewable sources. Architects and engineers brag about
who can design the greenest building.

Does this mean our society has
figured out how to live in harmony with the Earth's natural systems? Far from
it. But we are certainly closer to, if not at, the "tipping point." As Ray
Anderson, chairman of Interface and a tireless evangelist for industrial
ecology, explains it, An Inconvenient
Truth caused the supersaturated solution of concern about climate change
to precipitate into action. The movie came after Hurricane Katrina, high
gasoline prices, and several reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. An Inconvenient Truth
galvanized people around the world to stand up and say "Enough! It's time to
get serious about climate change."

My job at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill brings me into contact with many people from a variety
of backgrounds. In the UNC community, students were the first to understand the
profound implications of climate change. They even raised their own fees to
invest in renewable energy infrastructure directly on campus. Now some faculty
members are changing their research focus-a rare occurrence in academia-to
study a range of energy and climate related topics. Our chancellor has signed
the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, pledging
us to climate neutrality by mid-century.

While it's true that talk about climate
change still greatly exceeds action, signs of progress abound. When I wrote
about renewable energy technologies in the 1980s, California was the only state
with commercial wind turbines. Last year, 20 states installed utility-scale
wind turbines and Texas surpassed California in the amount of installed
generating capacity. Fully half the states now require utilities to generate a
certain minimum percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. North
Carolina joined the list in August, the first state in the southeast to do so.

Unfortunately price signals do not
yet steer people to make good environmental choices. Food transported halfway
around the world is often less expensive than food sold by local farmers. A
gallon of nonrenewable gasoline purchased from countries that don't much like
us costs less than a large mocha latte. Small businesses can deduct the full
price of a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle from their income taxes. And
first cost still trumps life-cycle cost savings for most individuals,
businesses, and government agencies.

Since leaving the Worldwatch
Institute, I have lived in Germany, the Netherlands, and several cities in
Canada and the United States. Seeing how various cultures address economic,
environmental, and social challenges is eye opening. When Germany unified in
1990, the country recognized that the cleanup required in the East would
position German companies to be international leaders in environmental
technologies. Packaging laws required product manufacturers to take
responsibility for recycling the packaging on their products. Toxic components,
unnecessary packaging, and materials that were difficult to recycle disappeared
quickly. This strategic approach to economic development and public policy
surfaces less frequently in the United States.

In the Netherlands we paid a
pre-recycling fee when we registered our car, and a quarterly road tax even
though we rarely drove the vehicle. Like the Dutch of all ages and socio­economic
classes, we rode our bikes everywhere. When my youngest was eight months old,
she sat in the bike seat mounted in front of my handlebars and peered out at
the world through a clear windshield. Saddlebags and a device that allowed me
to strap on an umbrella stroller enabled me to continue shopping car-free at
the open air markets. Safe and expansive bike networks, and expensive gas and
parking, made bike riding the easy choice.

In Canada, Germany, and the
Netherlands we appreciated the universal access to health care. I relished
giving birth to my younger daughter at home, the Dutch way, in a country with
one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. Now that I have a
fulltime job with health insurance in the United States, I pray that large
medical bills will not someday deplete all our savings. With half of all
personal bankruptcies caused by illness and medical bills, and most of those
among people who started with health insurance, I know that millions of
Americans must share this fear.

While outside the United States, we
marveled at the multi-stakeholder decision-making processes that included
government, the private sector, and community-based organizations. Maybe our
wobbly language skills had something to do with it, but there certainly
appeared to be less conflict and litigiousness. The cronyism, corruption, and
stonewalling that plague the current U.S. administration have set many
environmental causes back decades. On the plus side, I have participated in
multi-stakeholder community design processes in Florida and am engaging in them
more frequently as we design new buildings at UNC. Nonetheless, I feel a
diminished sense of civility and inclusiveness in the United States.

Fundamentally, the question comes
down to whether a society acts on its values. Providing health care for all,
discouraging the use of fossil fuels, and respectfully listening to multiple
points of view are values I hold strongly. My gut tells me that many, if not
most, Americans share these values. If that's true, then why do we struggle so
much, often with futility, to achieve these common goals?

I have seen many positive changes
over the past 20 years. Curbside recycling has become the norm. Yet new
landfills are still needed to make up the slack and they are as vocally opposed
as the Mobro garbage barge was
in 1987. Wind turbines and solar cells are starting to sprout up everywhere,
though less rapidly than I had hoped and anticipated. Building owners from all
sectors are starting to out-green each other. Many corporations, especially
those that also operate in Europe and Asia, are genuinely trying to reduce
their ecological footprint and improve their bottom line, rather than just
greenwashing.

My hope is that if I am still
around to write a column 20 years from now I will be able to write about how we
have reduced greenhouse gas emissions significantly, how we have reduced the
gap between rich and poor, and how we have protected habitats in order to
preserve the phenomenal biodiversity of this planet.

So next time you buy a house or a
car, or vote for a politician, or decide to take a new job, ask yourself "Am I
creating the change I want to see in this world?" Because like it or not,
everything is connected to everything else.

Cynthia Pollock Shea is director of
the sustainability office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.